Hard Fried.....

Well, my computer died last week.

And it really seemed to have died this time.

I was playing Sims 2 when it crashed big time. I tried to get up and was able to boot it in safe mood a couple of times. I at first blamed this on the LAST thing I downloaded- which was a program suggested by a gamer geek to tranfer cds to mp3s for my PSP( if anyone knows of a SAFE way to do this, I'm still interested), So the second time I got it in safe mood- I uninstalled the program he had me download.
Of course by the time I realized 'Crap I better back everything up while I can...' it was too late and refused to boot up AT ALL. I kept track of the error messages and I asked the gamer geek's wife to help me figure out what was wrong... as I like the wife and thought she'd help. She ended up E-MAILING me the advice... which I didn't get for several days until I had time to log on the computer at the library. I did try talking to the Geek Squad at Best Buy about this... and they wanted me to call their PAY 1-800 number which I didn't think was right.

So on my first non full workday( yesterday) I called Alienware teck support and asked for help. As per last time, I wanted to send it in and they wanted ME to troubleshoot things- going so far as having me open the computer and checking out the hard drive- even though I made it clear that I had *no clue* what I was doing. After about an 1 and 1/2( phone call lasted about 2 hours) we came to moment where he wanted me to download software to make SURE it was the hard drive( which I was pretty sure it was at this point). I pointed out the catch 22- that I couldn't download software because the computer wasn't working... I also was a bit worried because I felt it would take a few days to get someone else to download the files and then give them to me, at which point I would have to call Alienware again and talk to someone for another hour or so... So I opted to try and 're write the hard drive to factory specs' I figured that while I would lose data, that data was prolly lost anyway... and I had the guy on the phone.
I was unable to return the computer to factory sent specs, so they're sending me a new hard drive. I also had to spend another few min. to realize that they wanted my credit card BECAUSE if I didn't return the 'broken' hard drive, they'd charge me.

So I'm not happy because I now am responisible for changing hard drives myself. Alienware isn't doing it- I either have to beg a friend OR pay someone to do it. Likewise I just checked my email and there's a time table to do this- I have 5 days to mail it back. ARGH!

So hopefully things will be back to 'normal' by this time next week- even though I did lose about 3 weeks of data( including a cool Civ IV game.)

Oh and I'm a bit puzzled by the new board's specs:
[Item:BARRACUDA 80GB 8MB CACHE SERIAL ATA WITH NCQ HD, Qty:1]
[Replaced with Item:147GB SAS 15K RPM DRIVE, Qty:1]
I get the fact that I'm going from an 80gig hard drive to a 147gig... so that's nice... but is the 'cache' going from 8megs to 15K? or what is an rpm drive?
If anyone out there knows if I'm getting an upgrade or downgrade- I'd appreciate it if you let me know.

( note: please excuse my spelling mistakes- I normally write in word and then transfer to the blog, but because I only have limited time in the library today- I typed everything on the blog... and I find it's spellchecking to be a joke.)